Devin Nunes open to releasing transcript of Andrew McCabe testimony about FISA application

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said he is not opposed to releasing the transcript of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's testimony in which he allegedly said that the agency would not have pursued placing a Trump campaign adviser under surveillance without the unverified "Trump dossier" written by former British spy Christopher Steele.

“That would be a whole process that we’d have to go through,” Nunes told Fox News host Bret Baier on Friday evening after Baier asked him if the transcript would be released. “Actually, the quotes I think are pretty damning themselves.”

“I wouldn’t mind doing that, but we would have to go through a whole process to release transcripts,” he added.

The assertion about McCabe is made in a Republican memo that was compiled by the intelligence panel and released Friday. Meanwhile, Democrats have accused the memo of mischaracterizing McCabe’s testimony when he spoke with the intelligence panel in a closed session in December 2017.

Nunes told Baier McCabe “definitely” said that the dossier, commissioned by an opposition research group that was funded in part by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, was what prompted a surveillance warrant and that other witnesses said very similar things.

The Republican memo, released Friday, outlines alleged surveillance violations by the U.S. government and has encouraged Democrats to create their own memo as a rebuttal, although that has yet to be released to the public.

Nunes said he supports a vote to disclose the Democrats' memo, but added it was "hard to say" when that would take place.

The Democratic memo reportedly asserts that McCabe used the information contained in the dossier as part of a broader trove of material used for a FISA application to spy on former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, Carter Page, sources told the New York Times.

The Times' sources and the Democrats have said that evidence also included details about Page's contacts with a Russian intelligence operative in 2013.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that McCabe would be stepping down immediately as deputy FBI director.